Digital Library

Includes the images (with audio descriptions), ready for download and print in tactile format

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Online Editor

Used to create personalized content: linking audio descriptions to drawings

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Companion app

Reacts to hand gesture commands and plays the audio descriptions while the user explores the tactile graphics

What does THATS offer to a visually impaired person?

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Mobility

THATS will be available for smartphone and tablet (iOS, Android, etc.). The app will ease individual study. It will enrich entertainment choices. Personalized embossed maps will boost mobility and give more access to public spaces (streets, malls, museums, etc.)

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Inclusion

Our system will enable varied content (in multiple languages) which will improve their standard of living by helping the blind and the visually impaired to easier find a job. Any new study material means a new opportunity to easier integrate in society.

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Independence

For the first time, the blind and the visually impaired can study independently, without the assistance of another person or Braille text. They can do this anywhere and anytime, just by using a smartphone (or tablet) and the tactile graphics from the database.

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Free access

The whole system can be used for free. The materials are gathered through international crowdsourcing. Anyone can contribute to the digital library with images, labels and descriptions!

Newsletter

The representation of an image can be seen by a visually impaired person, also, if it’s on an embossed support and assigned to an audio description.

The present technology offers us the possibility to identify objects, but THATS does much more than that: it creates spatial images in the mind of a blind person.”

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Dan Patzelt,
THATS founder

No extra hardware, just FREE software

THATS (Touch & Hear Assistive Teaching System) is an educational and entertainment solution for the blind and the visually impaired.

Our users will find in the THATS digital library images with audio descriptions, on varied topics (and languages), from textbooks to audio comics. The images can be downloaded and printed on embossed paper for finger tracking.

THATS companion app recognizes images thanks to printed QR codes. The user grasps these tactile images by listening to the explanations while exploring them by hand. With the smartphone on a holder and its camera facing the tactile image, the user indicates with his finger a certain area he wants explained and the description is played.

Users such as teachers, parents or other authors will be able to create images and audio descriptions with the THATS online editor. The images will be assigned audio recordings or written descriptions (turned into audio by synthetic voices). All the files are uploaded in the THATS digital library, available to any user.